Page:15 decisive battles of the world Vol 1 (London).djvu/102

in those regions, who are allowed to make the best possible soldiers. Then, when we had done all this, we intended to assail Peloponnesus with our collected force. Our fleets would blockade you by sea, and desolate your coasts; our armies would be landed at different points and assail your cities. Some of these we expected to storm,[1] and others we meant to take by surrounding them with fortified lines. We thought that it would thus be an easy matter thoroughly to war you down: and then we should become the masters of the whole Greek race. As for expense, we
reckoned that each conquered state would give us supplies of money and provisions sufficient to
pay for its own conquest, and furnish the means for the conquest of its neighbours.

"Such are the designs of the present Athenian expedition to Sicily, and you have heard them
from the lips of the man, who, of all men living, is most accurately acquainted with them. The
other Athenian generals, who remain with the

adopt it. With the marvellous powers which Alcibiades possessed of ingratiating himself with men of every class and every nation, and his high military genius, he would have been as formidable a chief of an army of condottieri, as Hannibal afterwards was.

↑Alcibiades here alluded to Sparta itself, which was unfortified. His Spartan hearers must have glanced round them at these words, with mixed alarm and indignation.